Managing Artwork

[twotone8]

Been a while since I've posted.

I'd like to start adding artwork to my rom collection, starting with my NES collection, and i'm having a bit of a tough time.

There are several artwork torrents out there, but none of them seem to match up with the current No-Intro set perfectly.

Right now I have a relatively complete set of screenshots and titles, and most of the USA box and cartridge covers. The problem is renaming them to work with both GameEx and XBMC (which requires exact file name matches).

It seems to be something that several folks out there must have gone through at a certain time, yet information about managing such a thing is pretty scant. I wish there were a standardized artwork .dat I could feed into clrmamepro. As it is I'm trying to toy with a few renaming utilities, but those have been pretty problematic so far. Fat Match is great, but doesn't seem to want to automatically match the (Japan) tag to (J), meaning I have to pretty much go through each rom set one by one and select the appropriate region tag. Fuzzymatch is ok too, but also requires a manual scan-thru to check for errors. Skinny Match seems a bit beyond me what with all of the RegEx values out there.

What have people done in the past to get a nice, tidy, and mostly complete set of rom art for their collection? The No-Intro screenshot archive doesn't seem to include cover or cartridge art, and the cover art pack at EmuMovies only has about 600 pics.

Forgive the Blasphemy, but I almost entertained the idea of downloading a segment of the Complete Hyperspin Project simply to cannibalize the art and extras.

Is it against the rules to ask for some help in terms of artwork? Does anyone out there have a complete set that they're proud of, preferably using the latest No-Intro naming scheme?

Thanx in advance. Though I've been quiet on the forums lately, I've been using GameEx pretty steadily over the last year or so and I absolutely love it.

[fRequEnCy]

Tom created an app to download artwork from Emumovies and it will handle the naming for you. It's the best solution IMO. It's included with GameEx.

[twotone8]

what's it called?

[fRequEnCy]

what's it called?

It's called Download Service Utility. But it's found under Download Artwork and Videos under the Start menu in the GameEx folder.

[twotone8]

oh my god this is a fantastic little app. i'm well on my way. The emumovies database isn't as copmlete as it could be, but filling in the gaps using my previously downloaded box art collection isn't going to take nearly as much time as doing it all the hard way. This saves my but.

I wonder if there's any way to contribute to the emumovies box art library. there are some gaping holes in it where there really shouldn't be. (Castlevania II and III come to mind)

THANX TOM!

[Circo]

oh my god this is a fantastic little app. i'm well on my way. The emumovies database isn't as copmlete as it could be, but filling in the gaps using my previously downloaded box art collection isn't going to take nearly as much time as doing it all the hard way. This saves my but.

I wonder if there's any way to contribute to the emumovies box art library. there are some gaping holes in it where there really shouldn't be. (Castlevania II and III come to mind)

THANX TOM!

If you have anything you would like to submit please let us know over at emumovies. I will state that while the download utility does do renaming for best results start with a no-intro romset.

[twotone8]

Hey Circo! Thanx for all the hard work. If you wouldn't mind, i'd like to help fill in the gaps to your NES box-art set at least. Still figuring out the best way to do that, but hopefully it'll be complete in the next week or so.

[twotone8]

So here's my plan. I've been spending hours filling re-naming the current emumovies snap/cart/title libraries to match the new naming scheme using various tools. in certain instances, i have to make judgment calls as to which version of the rom goes with which piece of artwork.

i'm thinking about starting over from scrach.

The plan as of now is to revert my no-intro set to match the set used for each individual artwork library before using the download utility. I would hope this would keep things from getting matched incorrectly. for instance: the cart scans are listed as matching the 20091017 .dat. I'd revert my up-to-date no-intro set to match that set, then use the download utility to match it with the cart scans. From then I'd move on the the .dat used for screenshots, box-art, etc.

Once everything is updated to the current set, i'd go through the missing.txt file and try to hunt down as many missing bits as I can with the hopes of one day contributing to circo's artwork libraries on emumovies (if that's possible)

Is this practical? Does clrmamepro have a feature to re-name the art files along with the roms they're associated with? Is there an archive for old outdated .dat files I could use?

[Tempest]

Use Skinny Match for your artwork that Circo doesn't have. Click on my sig.

Circo posted above about contributing.